Palace, Supreme, And The Interplanetary Search For Streetwear Salvation

The bro Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation holds that two massive objects, floating gently in space, will exert gravitational forces upon one another, causing each to accelerate toward its galactic opponent. Free of friction or other external bothers, and depending upon their respective trajectories, the two eventually must collide.

So it was earlier this month that Palace unholstered its product description weapon-of-choice and let fly several bullet points in the direction of Supreme, asserting beneath a pair of bold blue sweatpants that the London-based cut-n-sew concern was ‘realer’ than its NY competitor, now stabled under the VF Corporation umbrella with assorted other clothing suppliers such as Vans and North Face*. For Palace, the silverback gorilla in the jungle of triangle logos, going at Supreme seemed inevitable after years of picking on smaller targets.

For Supreme, these no doubt have been some turbulent times. Hoovered up by VF in 2020 via a $2.1 billion deal, Supreme’s finances have since been laid somewhat bare for the investing public to parse, and as macroeconomic wobbles have wiggled, the brick-and-Oreo collaber’s fortunes have soured. VF reported last spring that Supreme’s annual sales for fiscal 2023 declined by about 7%, and fell short of the company’s projected $600 million, whilst Supreme-derived profits fell by about one-fifth. Supreme’s ailing sales led VF to book a $313 million charge on the brand’s lower presumed value, and as similar financial clouds have clouded around Vans and other of VF’s properties, VF  in the months hence has hired a new CEO, drawn the attentions of several activist investment firms, got hacked, and altered its board of directors.

To whom to turn when the seas of retail commerce grow exceedingly wavy? Funny you should ask; earlier this week, Supreme’s Instagram.com account refreshed to show the famous ascent of the Corcovado mountain, where the 100-foot Christ the Redeemer gazes across Rio de Janeiro, arms spread. As the vid shows mist tingling the statue’s concrete-and-soapstone skin, a small plane buzzes around towing a Supreme banner, until the camera angle and statue align to position the renowned ‘box logo’ across Jesus’ enrobed torso.

Is Supreme’s collab with Jesus Christ an appeal to a higher power during uncertain times, or rather a natural move after marketing ‘I (Heart) Satan’ tees a few years back? Was this clip meant to be in Supreme’s 2018 video ‘Blessed’ but wasn’t landed by deadline? Does this collab throw wide the doors for other potential tie-ups between skateboard brands and deities, such as an Odin guest pro model on Polar or a branded pope hat? Have people been aware of Heitor da Silva’s role in engineering the Christ the Redeemer monument?

*the bullet points in question appear now to have been swapped out.

Boil the Ocean Site Calls Special Stakeholder Meeting With Regards to the ‘Propeller’ Compensation Package Dudes

The excellent Vans vid, raucous and reverent, feels like the benchmark so far this year and maybe for the surrounding couple when it comes to big-budget video releases*, and like any such worthy it comes bearing some revelations in between the assorted handrail batterings and gently sloping concrete: John Cardiel with a soul-lifting schralp and Ray Barbee hucking a real-deal no comply, Gilbert Crockett’s hot-rolled steel coil pop, TNT’s best part in a decade, Pedro Barros’ vertigo-inducing deep-end dives, all AVE everything. One could go on.**

With the embers cooled one of the more interesting points comes via boss ‘Propeller’ technician Greg Hunt, who last week skimmed some of the sludge from the ‘music supervision’ murk to reveal the sway musicians hold over modern videomaking processes:

“So I had a rough edit because people [the musicians] want to see it, which is actually a solid week of work to do. So you put together a really solid rough edit, send it off, and then you never hear back. So you figure all right, maybe they don’t like it, so we need to find a plan b. Which means finding two or three other songs as alternates, and then doing a rough edit to those songs as well, just to see if they work, and pick the best option. So that’s another week of work. And then you find out that you got the first song you submitted. So it really sucks up a lot of time trying to clear music.
…
So that’s what we were looking at with Pedro’s part. We talked to the publishing company, and they said they were willing to let us use it, but we needed to get these four songwriters to sign off on it. Which is kind of impossible. It was 48 hours, but really it was 24 hours, because we only had a day to find out if it was possible or not, because if not I would need at least 12 hours to re-edit something, which would have probably been impossible because I still had other things to finish for the overall video. I decided just to make calls. I know a guy at Warner Brothers, and through making the video we got to know one of the main people at Beats by Dre, and he used to skate. They are both people that are deep in the music industry.

So I basically sent them both an SOS email saying, “I have to get a hold of these four guys, immediately, can you help me?” Both those guys basically got a team of people to help track these songwriters down. Literally it was like, one of these guys knew someone who knew a guy who knew the son of someone that was in the band, but he wasn’t even in the band when they wrote the song. It was someone who was in the band later. But I got in touch with the son, and then his dad, who told me he wasn’t in the band then, but to talk to this other guy, and eventually we got all four guys in the band on the phone within 24 hours and had them stoked to give us verbal okay to go ahead and use the song. But dude, that happens every time. The stress levels are out of control.

The highly reliable and widely cited Celebrity Net Worth web site estimates Rick Howard’s net worth at $45 million. Fandangle innovator Eric Koston is seen worth $15 million; Tony Hawk, who named a trick after Madonna, $140 million; Stefan Janoski and Andrew Reynolds, $20 million and $10 million apiece. Meanwhile the amassed riches of Greg Hunt, along with pro pastor Brian Sumner, remain under review.

Like the TWS vid disclaimers of old, it is acknowledged that there is only one Anthony Van Engelen, Geoff Rowley, Steve Caballero, Christian Hosoi, for better or worse Dustin Dollin, et cetera. But there’s probably a few hundred pros. The list of seasoned video makers with multiple big-release videos snugged under their shoelace belts is comparatively short. Besides Greg Hunt, names that come to mind include Ty Evans, Fred Mortagne, Jon Miner, Mike Manzoori, John Holland, Ewan Bowman, Jason Hernandez, Joe Castrucci. These are the box office-level safe hands; there are separate echelons of indie directors like Josh Stewart, Dan Wolfe, Bill Strobeck, Benny Maglinao, Lev Tanju, Pontus Alv, the sorely missed Dan Magee, and the Bronze 56K dudes with the duffel bag in the alley.

As the mp3 failed to subdue the full-length album, so far YouTube, Vimeo and their hyperactive younger sibling Vine have yet to torpedo the full-length video despite several steamy and Thrasher cover-ready death notices penned over recent years. Rob Dyrdek, that sunglasses-at-night visionary of the skate biz, has projected that there may be room for no more than 10 pros in the future — how many veteran filmer/editors will remain to compile blockbuster-level releases such as ‘SB Chronicles 17’ and ‘Still Tru, B’ and ‘Lakai Limited Footwear Presents Flarey Tales’ that despite years-long production processes, crushing hype-cycles and telephones increasingly swelled to cracking with web-ready video parts, still need making, as evidenced by VF Corp.’s five-year investment outlay behind ‘Propeller’?

Greg Hunt, whose near-matchless CV at this point includes ‘Sight Unseen,’ ‘The DC Video,’ ‘Mind Field,’ and ‘Propeller,’ in the Concrete interview says at one point that “I don’t know if I could have done this video 10 years ago. I think the only reason I was able to pull it off was experience I’ve had from doing videos in the past.” Should Greg Hunt’s breadth of talents — steering and organizing five years’ worth of skating and filming across multiple continents, steadily capturing tricks while pushing full-speed down drainage ditches, imploring Beats By Dre employees to his cause, managing filmers and colourists and Dustin Dollin, correctly identifying the need to continue incorporating Slayer into video parts as a service to the youth, consistently waking up before noon on road trips, sidestepping multi-year deadline blowings, projecting Brian Wenning’s future through a ‘DC Video’ skit over a decade ago — and subsequent scarcity as an asset qualify him as the highest-paid dude on the Vans team? Should one of the magazines feeling its way toward a more-digital world sponsor a Sundance-type festival for rising videographeurs?*** Will the bro-cam one day earn the respect it desires and become anointed the ‘brother-cam’? Is Andrew Reynolds, as a professional skater, video editor and experienced mammal handler an original Hollywood ‘triple threat’?

*Some may term them Films
**Like in this posting for instance
***Addendum: This interview with Propeller/etc filmer Ryan Lovell reminds that such a concept already exists